Penny Dreadfuls
by DarkSlayer84
Summary: Drabble and short ficlets. Various characters and situations; probably no ninjas. Varying levels of Innuendo, Violence, Language. Other notes on the individual drabbles. R&R?
1. Curtains

_**Curtains**_

DarkSlayer84

**Disclaimer:** I do not own Mortal Kombat, Midway does. Any and all original characters, words, concepts, and objects belong to me, and I will defend them. Nothing personal. By the way: this disclaimer stands for all following drabbles.

Special thanks to Nyohah, without whom I would have had nothing to call the collection.

_~ Sometime during MK II. Baraka's viewpoint. ~_

I'm too aware of what it means when her curtains are drawn.

_Stay awhile,_ she says. _Talk with me,_ she says.

It's never about words with her. Not with those in the way. Heavy purple velvet that kills all light, all vision.

Thin purple silk hiding shining white leg, robe and curtain sway a little when she moves, snakes past me, and sits on the bed.

_Come here,_ she says. Shifting her weight, her shadow spilling across the velvet, reaching hungrily for mine.

Leg sudden and pale and surprisingly lovely, unconcealed, gleaming on the sheets. Rich marble. Statues should not be so hot to the touch. So eager under rough nervous fingers. Workman's hands. Soldier's hands.

I let her go, turn and face the dark velvet crawling up the wall.

_Stay with me._ Accusatory, pleading. _Don't you like me?_

Pretty when she's angry, pretty when she needs me, beautiful always. Of course I like her.

Lips very, very red, nearly bleeding--smiling until it hurts. _Prove it,_ she says.

So I do. With overkill, maybe--what can I say? It's been minutes, hours, days since she last drew those drapes. Ages since we kissed. Too long since she set her palms against my shoulders, drew her legs over mine.

Her hair falls forward as she moves, we move. It tumbles over her shoulder, across her face and eyes. Thick and dark and shining. A waterfall at midnight. Scattering all light, blurring all perception.

Just like the curtains--perfect for hiding things behind.

*~END~* 


	2. Gifted

_**Gifted**_

_~ About 500 years before MK I. Third-person perspective. ~_

They are beautiful. Startling. Bright against the wrapping, brilliant against the crimson silk. It falls away, ripples away like a river of blood, and pools on the floor.

She is stunned. Speechless. Her tongue is firmly glued to the roof of her mouth, just where smooth bone begins to give way to the muscles of her throat. He is watching her, expectant, and she cannot bring herself to touch them. Her hands are sweating in her gloves.

Something flits across his face. Just at the eyes--those unreadable slashes of flame in his helmet's bone sockets. Something. A tension. Surprise, perhaps.

She curses her feet, silently, but they will not move. Her arms are dead weight at her sides. Her fingers tremble, once. It is the most she can do. She can't move and she can't stop staring at them. Into them. Watching the riot of color that is her reflection across their blurred steel surface. They're nearly mirrors. Slashes of mirror, triads of mirror, melted and reforged. Into weapons.

Mirrors that kill.

"Use them well," he says at last.

She finds her voice. The words leap from her mouth as if they had always been there:

"I shall, father. And I'll not disappoint you."

Her hands are steady. Strong as they reach forward and catches the weapons. She knows them, the pattern and weight of them, by heart. She sheathes them in her boots. It surprises her that they fit so well. They are colder and cleaner than the worn wood she practices with. She wonders what that means, why they seem so natural, why her pulse is racing.

She smiles at him for the first time in ages. Centuries, perhaps.

He sits back with another flicker of emotion. Another change around the eyes. Definite amusement. A clear smirk ghosts across his lips, swiftly and ruthlessly suppressed.

It's the closest he's ever come to smiling at her. Ever.

She wonders why it makes her feel so cold.

"I never doubted you, Mileena."

*~END~*


	3. Flawless

_**Flawless**_

_ Early Mortal Kombat II. Third-person. A More Traditional Couple. _

All it took was a glance. One. Just out of the corner of his eye.

He knew he shouldn't have. Knew that the practice yard was forbidden to him at this narrow hour, lean and dark and still. Knew what it was, what it meant, that flicker of not-black darkness hovering at the edge of his vision.

Blue. Not black. Blue. Rich indigo. 

She smelled of denim. 

Why? She'd never heard of it, never seen it, wouldn't know what it was if she reached out to touch it, to pull it off his shoulders. To carve it away with her fans. Delicate razorblade filigree that could and would make shreds of him.

He paused, froze, and watched her from the wings. She was like her weapons. She unfolded. She flowed, weaving against the air, every motion perfect. Every movement clean. 

_You're finally learning, Liu Kang._

Her words, springing unbidden from memory. They were like smoke and wood on his tongue.

He shrugged off his jacket and left it on a nearby bench. One cuff dangled over the edge, dark. It swayed. He turned and climed the shallow steps into the yard where she leapt and struck and killed a hundred invisible enemies. The yard with the smooth stones underfoot, the yard pale as death, bright and cold in the bitter, arid night.

She rounded on him and flew, knowing where he was, leaping into the space where he stood. His shoulders blazed with pain, burned from the kiss of her blades. She was a hawk, a falcon. Battering him to death with her wings. He cried out--the dazed cry of caught prey. She muffled the sound with her arm, blotted it out with her hand.

She smelled of denim and tasted of silk. Rich. Fragile and faintly dry.

She crushed his mouth with her hand. He stood there, rooted, feet tangled in the dead stones and cold ground beneath.

"You should not be here," she snarled, as he bled on her. "I'll be in the stocks for a week, at least. And you. They'll kill you. You human fool."

He stood quietly. Not resisting, not struggling. He simply waited and bled. The stains moved from him to her, spreading acrosss her arm, slowly winding down her glove. Blue and red. Both were black under moonlight.

"Your technique," he said slowly, "was perfect."

She smiled. A brief flash of white teeth. Liu's heart fluttered, then faltered into its normal rhythm when he realized she wasn't looking at him. She was glancing just over the top of his shoulder, into the shadows and hallways beyond. 

Kitana always knew when she was being watched, and by whom. Blue and red made purple.

"Yours," she said in clear, warm tones, "was flawless."

The shadows behind him writhed. She slid one hand into his hair, smoothing her fingers in it. She stroked his scalp with her palm, and the darkness over his shoulders swayed at the knees. 

Her arm slipped 'round him with infinite gentleness, not touching the wounds, and clinched across his waist. Her tongue was as smooth and clean as her lips. Porcelain. This was what it was to be kissed by a doll.

Perfection was so very cold. 

He murmured--made a soft, startled noise of surprise--and pulled free.

"I love you," he said.

"Of course you do," she replied. Still smiling.

They left together, arm in arm. He put his jacket over her shoulders, she put her head against his chest.They were so very comfortable together. Liu spoke of honor and vengeance in the same breath. Of hope and death, and love. Kitana chuckled a little at that one. At his earnest idealism. She'd never known that in a human before. She kissed his ear. She took his breath away and gave him promises in return. Low, warm words of reassurance eased like smoke through her cold, pristine lips.

The night rippled behind them as her watcher turned and fled.

He didn't notice, and Kitana paid it no mind. They were together, and nothing else mattered.

Everything was perfect, now.

END 


	4. Stitch In Time

_**Stitch In Time**_

Thanks to Ghostwriter for the title 

_About 500 years before MK I. Third person, AU history. Occurs shortly after "Gifted"._

They accepted her just hours ago. She runs to tell her sister--runs, and does not walk. After all, no one dares admonish her now.

They'll never say again that she is not a warrior.

They'll never say that she must sit, _thusly_, and stand, _just this way_, and _never_ raise her voice nor indeed speak much at all, for speaking moves the veil over her nose a little at a time, and her father will beat her if ever it falls in public.

There is none of that nonsense here. Here the walls are pale blue, like the sky, like the eggshells of the little birds who fascinate her so because their chests are red and she can see their hearts leaping, pounding with terror underneath the silky smooth feathers whenever she draws near. She both needs and cannot stomach that sound, that pulse, drumbeats building to a single rolling tone until she aches for them to stop. It's usually then that she puts a hand out, faster than the poor thing could ever hope to see, and crushes the noise out of it. 

She hates noise of any kind. Especially yelling. She thinks of yelling, sometimes, when she kills the birds. It makes her feel strangely guilty. They're pretty and innocent.

She is not pretty. By any stretch of the imagination.

Stepping through the doorway to her sister's room carries with it the feeling of being submerged in the ocean. It is a thing she has heard of, but never seen, endless blue-green miles of warm, insidious, crushing water. Water to soak the skin and blind the eyes, water to burn the lungs, the pressure of water to rip them apart. Water to choke away the screams for help, to suck them up in a storm of bubbles and wet paper, desperate spouts of air and bits of lung.

She is deathly afraid of drowning. But she never says a word.

Her sister, of course, looks up and smiles because that is what her sister always does. There's a comfort in that sameness, but insult, too--shouldn't it matter more to her? Kitana knows what she's feeling, has felt it herself in some way, like an echo. Shouldn't she be even a little happy?

Mileena wonders why she dared hope that her sister would care.

Kitana's eyes widen, delicate dark eyebrows tilting upward in surprise--she hasn't yet mastered raising one eyebrow, though they practice it together now and then, that secret skill they've seen on court ladies as they spied through railings and windows when they should have been asleep.

Kitana's eyebrows go up, but her heartbeat is always the same, steady and silken. Even and unpreturbed.

"Hello, Mileena." The name comes smoothly off her tongue. That small wet pinkish creature advances a bit as her lips press together to form the first sound, then swiftly retreats behind the fence of her smooth white teeth to make vowels. It's kinetic, an act of poetry.

Not like Mileena's own gravelly speech, low and hissing, a snake's bedroom invitation. Her tongue snaps and slides across the long, smooth backs of what might as well be doornails driven into her jaw, tiny swords with their single edge facing front.

"I'm sorry," says Mileena, because it is expected, "for intruding."

"You're never a bother." Kitana's little white lie is warm and effortless--there are knitting hooks in her lap, and a piece of some fabric or other growing between them. It's smooth and even, all the rings the same size, not a dropped stitch in sight. And it's crochet. Crochet uses the hooks. Knitting has needles. Mileena prefers knitting--those things would make decent weapons, in a pinch.

The crochet project is blue. Everything Kitana owns is blue. Her skirt beneath it is two shades lighter than midnight, and very definitely blue. Against that dark background, the fabric looks green. It's not proper blue after all, but very strongly greenish-blue, greener even than the walls, dark teal.

A present for Jade. 

Kitana's heart hitches a little, _ka-bump_, when she catches Mileena staring at it.

Mileena barely notices--the sound of her own heart is hard and loud between her ears, _bang bang bang bang_, a door in the wind with nothing to hold it closed.

The jealousy is nothing new. The pain just might be.

"They're taking names," she blurts out, softening the 'a' sounds and lingering too long on the 's'. Stress gives her the tones of the Wasteland, slurred and swift and a little flat. "Up at the arena."

"So I've heard," says Kitana softly, eyes firmly locked on the hooks as she darts them in and out of the loops. They've got a texture to them, an expensive and slightly fuzzy grain--velvet, then, or raw silk, like the richest of peasants wear now and then. Her breath goes in and out, just once, through those perfect white teeth. 

The sound is remarkably like Mileena's, and the meaning is the same. Pain and surprise.

"I'm leaving mine with the record-keepers," says Mileena. Pride makes her voice tremble. Father gave her the means, the weapons, a few months hence.

"How nice." Kitana's voice is remote, very cold, the way it always gets lately when Mileena's goes eager and warm. Her heart gives her the lie, though, quickening a little.

"Didn't you leave yours?" Mileena finds it very easy to be coy from behind her bit of cloth; she knows her sister's feelings, slipping around in the back of her head, colliding and dissolving like drops of ink in water. Irritation. Annoyance. And, buried under crisp, cool apprehension, her own little touch of excitement.

_Ka-bump._

"I didn't think to."

Mileena smiles, and it's faintly bitter; it hurts her face. The silk of her mask tickles as she breathes against it, and her words have just enough sting in them, smug and confident.

"You dropped a stitch."

END 


	5. Doubles

Doubles

_**Doubles**_

DarkSlayer84

**Notes:** Set during Kahn's occupation of Earth, extremely AU. K+ (PG-13) for language and minor innuendo; blink and you'll miss it.

_Been so long here, I could die here_

_Lying by your side_

_But time won't claim me, time and me only_

_I'm just killing time_

--The Creatures, "Killing Time"

It was a dull, brittle amber color, shining even in the listless gloom of the bar. It reflected and amplified every shred of light that touched it, up there, on the top shelf, trapped in glass.

Letters. Words. She has no words, so she's had drinks instead. They float and blur together, now, drinks and letters. Meaningless jumbles of white on a black label that used to say something about a man named Jack.

Jack? Horrible name. His parents must have hated him.

She understands that perfectly: parents and their hatred. That thought is clear, brilliant, beautiful in this cheap, dirty room with a cracked mirror for a back wall.

Everything is foggy, thick and slow like the stuff in the bottle. Her tongue is heavy. It gets in the way of her words as she tells no one—she is alone--how things at Sixth and Dunaway went down.

"Killed 'im. Opened him up like a fish. Fucking humans. Th' bastard with the hat."

The tears keep running; she doesn't bother to touch them, to move them or stop their flow. So much water wasted. He'd be horrified. Or perversely happy. He always admired tears and weeping, incapable of either himself.

Her hands, her fists, scrape across the bar, dragging along shards and splinters and blood. "Who fights with a _hat_?" She sobs, hiccups. "Christ."

"You've had enough." Those words have winter in them, cold and clear and sober.

_She_ is always sober. Prim and clean and ever so righteous about it. Humans have a phrase for that--something, something that could be said, something appropriate.

Oh, yes.

"Piss off..." her leaden tongue mars the insult. It's awful, being drunk and angry at the same time. But it's better than feeling. It's better than pain. "Sister. Dear."

Strong steady hands fold over hers, blue over violet, and gently pry the glass away.

"What if someone sees you?"

Dimly, she remembers being ashamed of her face—she threw herself at the wall, beating pieces out of it, splitting the mirror in its frame before attacking the shelves. It was a lifetime ago. Three hours and counting. She's made friends with the glasses since, the glasses and bottles and everything in them.

"They'd laugh." He never cared. He used to whisper in her ear. _Darling dear sweetness love angel beauty._ He insisted she was beautiful.

He was dead.

"Come on." Words and touch, both firm, like the thoughts running through the connection, deadening some of the alcohol--clarity.

She doesn't want that. She swats the hands away, violet over blue.

"Leave me alone."

Those hands fold, dark blue, and loop softly around her shoulders. Blue on violet. She has to fight the urge to relax. It feels so good to be held.

"Suppose he were here." Such soft words, sleek strong arms, dark hair silky against the back of her neck, against the side of her face. Warm gentle words in her ear. "Would you want him to see you like this?"

Guilt like a knife between the ribs, swift and lethal and so very bright.

"No." Such a small word. Such a small truth. "Not at all."

"Then stand up."

She pushes off against the bar, onto shaking legs in a room that refuses to stay still, all ravaged shelves and leaking bottles, a jagged, reeling confusion of glass. She notices the stench for the first time, the nearly medical intensity, fumes so overpowering her nose almost bleeds from the stink. Tears and sweat and alcohol. It hurts.

None of it solves anything. Nothing ever changes. What a fool she's been. Quaking violet.

"That's it." More coaxing, more words, such warm hands. Blue. Stable and strong. "Let's go."

Hands touch. Join. Blue and violet.

"Wait. Wait, 's here s'mewhere..." The mask. One can't go out in public without one's face on. Or with it off.

"Here." A wisp of cold blue satin in warm blue hands, the calm, warm pressure of lips on her cheekbone just beneath the eye.

"Th-thank you." It's a shocking thing to say, but that was a shocking thing for Kitana to do.

"Don't thank me."

She doesn't ask why not. She knows better.

"'Bye, Jack," she says instead, waving to the shelf. Her sister quirks an eyebrow and holds her steady.

Together they turn and face the dying sunlight, leaving behind the ruins of glass.


End file.
